Forever
by ElvishGrrl
Summary: Spoilers post 3.22. We follow Elena's journey over the next 20 years since turning. She's searching for what she's lost and trying to find a way to become whole again.


**A/N **_This is a companion piece to a one-shot I recently posted entitled "Gone". If you haven't read "Gone", I'd highly suggest you click on my profile and find and read that one first. It won't take you very long, promise. :) Thank you._

_So this is what Elena's been up to during that time. Special thanks to CreepingMuse & JWAB for their beta-ing skills & suggestions.  
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_If you like this story (or 'Gone" or any fic you're reading), please consider leaving a review. Thank you to both my regular and new readers. It means a lot to me that you've been following my stories. I'm deeply grateful for you all.  
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***DISCLAIMER*** _I do **NOT** own Vampire Diaries or the characters associated with Vampire Diaries. No copyright infringement intended._

* * *

**Forever**

"_Forever is a long, long time when you've lost your way. Trying to follow your ideals." – Phoenix, "Lasso" _

xxx

She didn't break when he left. Not on the outside at least. Inside, she shattered. Is still shattered.

When his brother left a few months later, she didn't break then either. Honestly, at that point there wasn't a whole lot left to fracture. Nothing remained but dust. Ash.

But outside, she maintained her strong facade. Her friends didn't understand. Couldn't understand. They thought she was in denial. She wasn't. Isn't.

She holds herself together tightly. Her shell may be thin, brittle even. But she holds it strong. She is in control. She has to be.

When she woke up on that cold metal slab all those years ago and looked into those two pairs of worried eyes and realized what had happened, she did break. That was the one and only time. Four strong arms held her in place, prevented her from exploding. A hand muffled her scream. Another gently stroked her hair.

But it didn't help. She could hear, smell, feel and see…everything. The whole hospital and all its occupants - so loud, so bright, so…horrible. None of it was what she wanted. She'd died and she'd been at peace and then suddenly she was back and everything was all too much. She felt like she'd awakened into some horrible version of hell. One with two low voices whispering encouraging words into her ears.

As she struggled and fought against the loving arms that restrained her, a fifth hand had pressed against her cheek and a third voice had eclipsed all the other sounds. Elijah. She'd calmed instantly.

He had taken her then, away from them, and she'd been grateful. She'd gone with him to the Mikaelson house, lived there for a while. She can't remember how long any more. Weeks? Months, probably. The mansion had felt hollow and empty, just like she was (still is). Bad memories lurked in some rooms. She'd avoided those places.

Elijah had taught her all the things she'd needed to know about negotiating her new reality. (Oh God, her forever - how can she possibly comprehend forever, even now?) The most important thing he'd taught her was control. After some trial and error, they'd both been pleased to discover that she excelled at it. In fact, her tight grip on it was the only thing that kept her tethered to her fragile humanity (and sanity) every day. It was the reason she was able to move back home with her brother again. The reason she could return to school and finish her senior year. The reason she could let them both go without screaming, crying or begging them to stay.

She understood why they'd wanted to leave. Why they couldn't stand to be around any longer. They surely sensed that she was only a fragment of her old self. The girl they used to love was gone. Nothing left but a mirage.

She had stayed, been the sister and friend that was needed, expected. Kept up all appearances of normality. Wore the shell of human-Elena like a protective barrier. It turned out control was her strength and she brandished it like a brittle shield. Every single day.

But not at night. At night, in the wee silent hours when everyone was asleep, she would return to the boarding house. She never went inside; she wouldn't take the risk of a chink in her carefully constructed armour. No, she always went out back.

And then she would run. She would speed through the dark forest for miles, the wind blasting her face, her hair. The roar of the rushing air deafened her ears and numbed her senses. She would focus on nothing but the stretch and flex of her muscles and the cold breeze on her skin. And all that turmoil she kept so tightly sealed would just dissipate.

When she knew she was miles from any civilization, she would scream. From deep in her gut she would cry out like a banshee into the black night. Loud and primal and terrible. Like there was nothing more powerful or more fearsome than she was. And it felt so fucking good. In those moments she felt almost alive again. Almost.

When Jeremy had graduated high school and gone off to college (back to Denver – how ironic was that?) she had locked up the house and left her hometown.

She's been roaming ever since. At first she tried to tell herself she wasn't looking for him. But she soon relinquished that lie. She was. She is. She has been since the moment she'd watched the "Welcome to Mystic Falls" sign dwindle to a speck in her rear-view mirror.

* * *

A mindless blur of years fly by.

Maturing but never changing, being trapped inside this eighteen-year-old shell of her former self – it's infuriating sometimes. She still looks like the kid next door. But people tend to forget that looks can be deceiving. Sometimes she uses this to her benefit.

She runs at night still. Sometimes for so long and so far that it takes many hours to find her way back to her truck. For that short time she strips off the mask of "Elena", lets it go, sets it free. It's her favourite part of the day.

Her control holds her firmly in its death-grip all other times. She does not kill. She doesn't steal blood-bags very often, either. _Snatch. Eat. Erase_. Like Elijah taught her, yes, but also how she knows _he_ operates. It's the smartest way. And her tight grip on herself never once waivers. She is this girl now. No, this _woman_. She is a force to be reckoned with, an abomination of nature that takes no prisoners. Except the part of her imprisoned inside, just waiting to find the right cannonball to break down these walls.

She moves through the roadways and paths, sidewalks and underbrush, alone.

* * *

Ennui sets in after a while. Change beckons.

She travels to Europe by ship; she's in no hurry. After driving fruitlessly around the United States for nearly a decade she just needs a change of scenery. She longs to feel connected to something…older. Connected to anything, really. And she has always wanted to see the world.

Never once did she imagine she'd be doing it solo.

In Italy, she meanders through remote olive orchards by day and stalks ancient cobble-stoned streets by night.

In France she basks against ivy-knotted walls of crumbling hillside chateaus in the sunshine and runs through clotted arboreal forests under the moonlight.

She talks to no one. Not speaking the local tongue has its benefits. They tend to stare at her anyway; she doesn't blend in. Can't. Won't. What's the point?

In Scotland she reads an old children's prayer:

_From ghoulies and ghosties  
And long-legged beasties  
And things that go bump in the night,  
Good Lord, deliver us._

And she laughs to herself, a bitter, painful, near hysterical laugh. Because now she is the long-legged beastie and she is the thing that goes bump in the night.

Except she doesn't. She moves through it as silent as a memory.

* * *

Eventually she returns to the soil of her homeland. There's only so long she can stay away from the familiar, from all the places that remind her of home and of them and of him.

Lately she's been feeling exceptionally… lonely. She longs to see a face that connects her to her old self again. Someone that matters. That tethers.

* * *

One crisp autumn morning she's sitting on a park bench. She studies the seagulls screaming and diving for scraps along the path. She's biding her time. Waiting and thinking and waiting some more.

A man silently sits down beside her, rests his hand on her shoulder, says her name in a low murmur. Elijah. She hugs him; she's missed him. He's the first connection to her old life she's had in so long.

"You're looking for him?" he asks, but she's fully aware he already knows the answer. He knows her so well.

She simply nods, her former smile shrinking to a grim line on her face.

If he knew how to end her search he would tell her, but he doesn't. He wishes he did.

Elijah's eyes were not the first ones she looked into when she was reborn into this surreal new "life" of hers, but they were the ones to still her mind. She loves him like a father. For all intents and purposes he is now.

At that, she thinks of Alaric and her heart clenches. For their loss - hers and Jeremy's - of course, but also for _his_. He lost all three of the people he loved that night, in one way or another. So much just ripped away with one watery gasp.

She spends some time with Elijah. New York is vast and chaotic and easy to disappear in. Get lost in. She thinks she could learn to love this city if she'd ever let herself stand still for a while.

But she can't. Staying would mean…well…_stopping_. And she's simply not ready to stop.

* * *

Another empty year goes by.

She's driving north on the famed Route 66, Chicago set in her sights. She doesn't really know why, but she feels a draw to come here like the slight yet insistent pull of a tiny minnow on a long fishing line.

As she moves through the fog across the parking lot toward the door of some noisy roadhouse on the south side, that minnow grows. He's a trout now. Maybe a salmon. Wiggling and tugging her along.

She stills in the doorway, her focus zoned in on the back of a head at the bar. Stefan. She takes the stool beside him.

His eyes nearly bug out of his head. Gasping her name, he envelops her in his arms.

She smiles and pulls back.

"I'm so sorry," he begins. "Can you forgive me?"

Angling her head, she studies him for a moment. "Nothing to forgive," she finally replies. She knows why he left (why they both left) and she doesn't blame him (them.)

"I failed you." He looks guilty. Pained. It's the familiar expression her mind always conjures up when she pictures his face. Which seems to occur less and less as time drags on.

She sighs. "You didn't. I understood. There were never any hard feelings. I knew why you had to go. I wasn't the girl you fell in love with anymore." She pauses, then softly adds, "Either of you."

His brows fly up. "That's not true. It just wasn't…" He's grasping for the right words. "I realized I couldn't be who you needed. Or really wanted. It was never because I didn't want you."

Her iron exterior shows no cracks but his words do penetrate. "Have you seen him?" she asks quietly. She hopes after all these years her question won't cause him more pain.

His answer shocks her. He has seen his brother, right in this very bar only hours before. Which means he's here, in Chicago. She feels something tiny inside her surreptitiously begin to fissure.

When she realizes Stefan has no idea where his brother went or how to find him, she thanks him, promises to keep in touch and rushes out.

If she were human still, she thinks her heart would be racing.

* * *

She doesn't find him in Chicago. Or Detroit. Or Toronto. Or any of the places in-between.

But that tug, the one that had swelled up in that bar in Chicago, then diminished when she left, it begins to slowly grow again. Each city pulls on her slightly harder. By the time she heads north out of Toronto it's exponentially increasing by the minute. She wonders if she's losing her mind. But she doesn't stop following its lead.

As she drives it strengthens further; it leads her off the highway and onto side roads, draws her insistently around each bend and turn. Her heart and skin and even her eyeballs seem like they're thrumming with a low harmonic. She's beginning to feel like she's the one being reeled in instead of the other way around.

The dirt road she's on dead-ends at a group of rental cottages. She's somewhere deep in the forest. Panic is setting in.

She slams the truck into park and leaps out. The tug is dragging. Relentless.

Her feet fly down a dirt track. Wrenching her. Eating her alive.

In her veins her blood is singing, shrieking. The fissures are widening, cracking her shell apart from the inside out.

She sees a rustic cabin, a tree lined lake behind it. The eerie calling of loons in the distance barely penetrates. She rounds the side of the building. The yanking line and screaming, vibrating blood are obscuring everything else. Consuming all but one thing. One thought.

She stops in her tracks.

The pull abruptly vanishes. Her vision tunnels to a single focus only.

He's sitting on the end of a dock.

Even though she can only see his silhouette in the distance from where she stands, the back of his tousled dark hair, she knows it's him. She'd know him in a crowd of a million.

Not once in the past eighteen years since that horrible day (when she fucking died and was okay and came back and everything sucked) has she allowed herself the luxury of crying. Not once. Now her shield simply crumbles and tears run freely down her cheeks. She barely notices them.

She steps onto the rough-hewn planks. Spinning around at the soft sound, he leaps to his feet. Wet tracks streak her cheeks and dribble onto her neck and her shirt and she doesn't fucking care because the pull is gone and she feels like maybe just maybe she can find some semblance of her old self again now. It's within reach.

His eyes meet hers and she doesn't understand the confused expression in them but she doesn't care about that either. It doesn't even matter. Moaning his name, she runs to him and wraps her arms around him, pressing her face against his neck. She whispers his name over and over.

His skin is damp from her tears. He smells incredible. Bourbon and leather and campfire smoke and she's missed him so goddamn much. It wraps around her senses and she feels content the way you do when you finally sleep in your own bed again after being away for a month, a year, a millennia. For forever. Her lips press against his throat.

For a moment he stands stiff in her embrace. And she has a second or two of worry that she's still not that girl he used to love, that he still doesn't want her.

Then he sighs and envelops her snugly in his arms. He presses his nose into her hair.

"Elena." His voice is a drowning man's last gasp. A long-cherished wisp of a memory.

Hers is a blissful sigh. "I knew I'd find you."

She pulls back slightly. Looks him straight in the eyes. They're glazed, misty. His relief has a vitality of its own. She can taste it, feel it. Own it. Wear it.

"I'll always find you."

**- FIN -**

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